Allotropes (an Ell Donsaii story #8) (11 page)

“Audio and video.”

“We can send that over the same wire.”

Keenar’s eye swung to fix
on Querlak, “I think they can send
much
more information,
much
faster with this ‘digital encoding.’”

Querlak tilted her eye curiously, still not sure that fast encoding
would provide that much benefit, but glad that Keenar seemed mollified.

Keenar said, “You know how everything Sigwald says in our language sound
s like he’s exactly copying something you’ve said to him? He sounds exactly like you, though the words are chopped up wrong?”

Querlak bobbed her eye in agreement.

“I think he’s just recorded your words with that ‘digital encoding.’ Then I think he brings your words back from where he’s recorded them by de-coding them.”

Querlak
swung her manipulators, “We can record words.”

“
But
, we can’t bring them back one at a time in a different order like Sigwald does. Well, we could, but it would take a long time.” Keenar had a somewhat distant look as he mused on this but then he returned to his primary focus. He snarled, “This ‘digital technology’ is interesting, but it’s just distracting us from the fact that what we
really
need to know is how Sigwald got here and where he came from!” He got another distant look as his TS considered, then said, “What our race needs is a place to expand, not a better way to do calculations or communicate.” He turned, “We’ll be able to form a TS soon and I’ll be able to speak to Sigwald directly, then we’ll see what’s what.”

Querlak felt apprehensive about the TS that would merge Osnak into Delnitch. Occasionally a smaller clade dominated a larger clade when they merged… but Delnitch was
huge
. Obviously Keenar expected to be the senior partner once the fetus of Ezan and Nonas matured enough that its 5
th
dimensional connections to its mother and father joined the two clades. Keenar expected to use what Querlak had learned of Sigwald’s language without learning it himself. Since Querlak’s brain would be the main repository of that knowledge Querlak would likely find herself a minor but almost constant partner in that Delnitch TS.

She didn’t think she was going to like it. She blew air through her spiracles and
turned back to Sigwald. She tried to generate more good will by attempting to further clarify to Sigwald the pressure-temperature and charge conditions inside the constructor that were necessary when it rapidly formed diamond.

Perhaps if she could get Sigwald to tell Osnak clade something of importance they could a
bort the connection to Delnitch?

Chapter Four

It was 6:30 in the morning when Shan stepped into Ell’s spare bedroom and said, “What’s up with the sigmas?”

Ell said, “Querlak, please wait.” She paused a moment, then said, “Allan,
pause waldo function.” She pulled her hands out of the waldo gloves and pulled off the head set. She lifted her feet out of the toe clips and leapt off the saddle into Shan’s arms. “Hey there good lookin’,” she grinned up at him.

Smiling down at her Shan said, “Hey yourself. I wonder what Querlak thinks when Sigwald goes motionless like this?”

“I don’t know what she thinks. I think
I’m
desperately in need of a kiss.”

Shan grinned, “There you go, thinkin’
only of yourself.” He leaned down for that kiss.

A minute or so later they broke apart and Shan waggled his eyebrows, “Oooohh, that was good for me too.
Maybe Querlak could wait a bit longer?”

Ell said, “
Nope, Keenar’s gone for the moment so we need to get back to business. Querlak’s been able to define a lot of the pressure and temperature conditions of the plasma in their additive carbon manufacturing for me. At first I thought some of the pressure figures were in error due to translation problems. A lot of the pressures are very low. Actually, they’d qualify as vacuum. But, some are
unbelievably
high. However, I’ve reconfirmed them every way I can think of. After a bit I realized that the chambers were made of lonsdaleite, diamond, graphend and graphene. I ‘accidentally’ banged the side of the constructor with Sigwald’s hand and, as expected, it damaged his hand but didn’t leave a mark on the constructor. They probably
can
achieve those pressures inside chambers made out of their carbon materials. From some of the diagrams Querlak’s shown me, I’m pretty sure they use infrared lasers to jump the temperatures in areas where they want certain allotropes. I’m also getting the impression they use a squirt of ionized carbon to convert from one allotrope to another in specific areas.” She shrugged, “We’re a long way from going out and building something that’ll do what their little box will do.” She raised eyebrows over a grin, “But, just knowing that it
can
be done and
approximately
what conditions are correct will move us along a lot.”

Shan got into the saddle of the waldo controller. “How about our friend Keenar?” he asked putting his toes in the clips.”

“Still acting like a total jerk. I mean we only get a few words because he talks so fast and Querlak almost always has to translate. And of course, I shouldn’t claim to understand their body language, but despite my cognitive comprehension that I really don’t know what’s going on, it still comes down to… I can’t stand the SOB.”

Shan snorted and pulled on the goggles, “Well I’m glad to have such a rational thought process laid out for me.
I didn’t know they had female dogs out at Sigma Draconis.”

Ell stood admiring Shan’s lanky, ropy muscularity as he pulled on the waldo gloves. She brushed her hand over his arm, “Thanks for running Sigwald this morning. I’ll take him back over
using the controller at D5R as soon as my meeting is done.”

“Umhmm,” he murmured, “No big rush, I don’t teach my class ‘til 10.”

Ell smiled at him a moment longer. Shan really liked teaching math, though he tried to make it out to be a pain. She turned and headed down to her car.

Shan looked around through Sigwald’s eyes. Querlak stood patiently waiting, staring into the distance. When Shan switched on the waldo connection and Sigwald moved again Querlak turned her focus back onto him. He saw Keenar approaching a little ways in the background.

“You… well, Sigwald?” Querlak asked.

“Yes, just a moment’s rest.” Shan said, wondering how many of his words Allan was able to translate correctly. “Allan what were you able to say as a translation for that?”

“‘Yes, sleep little.’” Allan said, “I don’t have words for ‘moment’ or ‘rest.’”

Keenar arrived and brusquely pushed Querlak aside, rapidly speaking the sigmas’ language. Allan translated, “Doesn’t… matter… what is… important… stars.” Keenar stopped speaking and moved his eye very close to Sigwald. It felt somewhat threatening to have him so close. Like he was in Shan’s personal space, even though he was actually nineteen light years away.

Behind Keenar, Querlak said in her own version of English, “Keenar want know, how go, stars.
Say, very important.”

Shan pondered a moment, then said, “Allan, tell them Sigwald was sent to Sigma Draconis by others and doesn’t know how it was done.
He
cannot
teach that. He would be happy to continue trying to teach them about computers in exchange for more information about carbon manufacturing.”

Allan said, “
I’m saying, ‘Others make go Sigwald to Sigma. Sigwald not know how. Cannot tell how. Can say more of thinking machine if you say more of carbon making?’”

Querlak bobbed her eye up and down and said, “Yes…” Then turned and spoke rapidly to Keenar.

Keenar shoved Querlak violently aside and stepped very close, putting his eye inches from Sigwald’s right eye and spouting his own language.

Allan translated, “You…
say
… stars.”

Shan stared a moment and thought about giving Keenar a shove himself. Since Sigwald was strong enough to walk around in a full earth gravity, he should be immensely powerful compared to the sigmas. Taking a deep breath he let it out.
No need to get in a fight. We desperately want knowledge—so other sigmas probably do too. And there’s a lot more ringworld to look at. Bound to be friendlier sigmas to talk to somewhere.
He said, “Allan, hover please. Then back us away from Keenar, turn us around and head back onto the road toward the circle sea.”

Keenar’s eye widened when air began hissing out from under Sigwald’s feet. A jet of air struck him in the mouthparts as it pushed Sigwald back away from him in a skidding fashion. Keenar had only seen Sigwald walk in his ungainly clomping fashion on those two excessively thick lower extremities. When Sigwald spun and began to slide more and more rapidly away down the roadway, he turned to Querlak. “How is he moving?! I haven’t seen that before.”

Querlak drew herself up, “I told you he moved by sliding on his feet.”

“I thought you meant sliding them one past the other to walk like he has been doing! When will he be back?!”

Querlak swung her lower manipulators in an exaggerated
shrug. “I think you made him angry. Maybe he won’t come back. You sigmas from the big clades all think you can just demand something and it will happen, but it makes other people angry.”

“You’ll be part of a ‘huge clade’ soon enough,” Keenar said darkly. “Let’s go after him.” He lifted into the air
with a couple of violent wing beats and started down the road behind Sigwald.

Querlak thought of refusing
, but Keenar was right. Soon enough she would be part of his clade. She blew a long sigh out her spiracles, letting her TS go, then lifted into the air. After all it didn’t require a TS to fly after Keenar.

***

Gary knocked on Ell’s door frame, a little worried about why he might have been called in to see the boss first thing in the morning. In her office no less. Ell almost always met with people wherever they were working rather than calling them to her office.

Ell looked up and said, “Hey Gar’, close the door and have a seat.”

Gary swallowed as he did what she asked. He knew Ell’s famous open door policy wouldn’t be violated lightly. What could be wrong? He absolutely loved working here and the progress that her company’s investment had allowed him to make on graphene synthesis had been nothing short of astounding. The graphene spinner he’d installed in D5R’s space habitat might just as well be printing money. There was so much demand for product that the prices just kept rising. He currently had four more spinners in construction and had been wanting to talk to Ell to see if the D5R board would consider adding another weightless module to the habitat just for spinning.

She said, “I’m wanting to talk
to you about something that I don’t want anyone else to know, would you mind disconnecting your AI?”

Fingers almost trembling, Gary pulled off his headset and popped out its PGR chip to disconnect it from his AI.

Ell steepled her fingers and looked at him as if trying to decide how to say something important. Gary’s heart sank further as he tried to think what he had done wrong. Ell said, “You’re getting pretty good at making graphene.”

Gary nodded, desperately wondering where this could be going.

Ell looked distantly up toward the ceiling then looked back at him. She quietly said, “How would you feel if someone gave you some hints on high speed carbon macromolecule assembly?”

Gary felt goosebumps, “You mean, a
n even better way to make graphene?!” He had mixed feelings, first that it would be wonderful to be able to make it faster or better in some fashion. But he also felt disheartened that someone else had figured it out instead of himself.

Ell’s eyes came back to him as she nodded, “And other carbon allotropes.”

“Diamond?!” Gary whispered.

She nodded, “And lonsdaleite. Proton bombarded magnetic carbon. Graphene with some bonding between layers. Doped graphene.”

Gary felt lightheaded.
Lonsdaleite! Magnetic carbon!
Weakly he said, “You’ve already figured out how to do these things?”

Ell shook her head, “No, but I have some ballpark methods and I’m working on a theory that I think will let us calculate precise conditions. To flesh out the theory I need experimental data from approximations of those conditions.”

“If you already know how to do this… why are you talking to me?”

“Let’s just say I know it
can
be done… and I have a good but not exact idea what the conditions would be for some of the different allotropes. However, I’m not a carbon macromolecule expert like you. I need someone who can help me understand why those conditions work and whether my theory on how they work has holes in it or not. If my theory
is
in fact predictive, it should let us make what we want, where we want it.”

“So, you want to form a team to work on it?”

Ell shrugged, “Kinda. What I envision is that I tell you the approximate conditions and you test around them, as well as some other ‘non-forming’ conditions that would check my theory. You provide me results from your tests so I can work on my theory.”

“And if we get it to work? I mean so we can synthesize, say lonsdaleite? Do we form a company to make it?”

“Gary,” Ell leaned forward and focused a serious eye on him, “Take it as a given that it
does
work. What we need to do is refine and understand the process. Then you patent it, assigning rights to D5R and we decide whether we license the processes to make it, or make stuff ourselves.”

“Stuff? You mean lonsdaleite? We can make graphene right now and I assume you know that people have been synthesizing diamond for a long time.”

Ell tilted her head, “Gary, you’re thinking small. Imagine you want the world’s best sword. What if I told you I could make you one out of diamond in a couple of hours?”

“Well,” he said, drawing the word out. “That would make an amazing display item. But it would break too easily to actually be a good sword.”

“Now suppose I told you I could lay it down in layers of diamond alternating with layers of graphene. So we’d have a composite laminated material with the graphene supplying tensile strength of over 120 gigapascals and the diamond supplying compressive strength of over 230 gigapascals. Then we coat the outer surface and cutting edge with lonsdaleite having a Mohs hardness of 15.”

“Holy crap!” Gary breathed. “That
would
be the ultimate sword. If you could swing it hard enough you could cut right through a steel sword.” He glanced up at her, “You know most steels’ strengths are only about one to two gigapascals?”

“I’m sure you can imagine that such a sword wouldn’t actually see much use, no matter how awesome it would be. But, how about
knife that never gets dull, lenses that never scratch, a car you couldn’t dent. Or buildings made with such structural materials, think they might last for quite a while?”

Gary sank back in his chair, a dazed look in his eyes. “I doubt
knives, cars or buildings would be the first things we made. Our current cars work pretty well. There are too many other things that are pushing the edge of our current mechanical performance envelope that we’d want to make first.”

“I’m pretty sure that limitless uses would be found once we developed the technology.”

Gary’s eyes refocused on Ell and he sat up. “How do you know about these ‘conditions’? You’re telling that you ‘have a theory’ that needs to be tested, but that I should, ‘take it as a given that it
does
work’ as if you’ve seen it work? If you’ve
seen
it work, why do you need for me to test it?”